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Based on the document, what are some things you notice ?

Based on the document, what are some things you notice ?

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Based on the document, what are some things you notice ?
Native Americans long dominated the vastness of the American West. Linked culturally and geographically by trade, travel, and warfare, various Indigenous groups controlled most of the continent west of the Mississippi River deep into the nineteenth century. Spanish, French, British, and later American traders had integrated themselves into many regional economies, and American emigrants pushed ever westward. The West was becoming more industrialized and laid down rails and pushed its ever-expanding population ever farther west. Indigenous Americans have lived in North America for over ten millennia and, into the late nineteenth century, perhaps as many as 250,000 Native people still inhabited the American West. But then unending waves of American settlers, the American military, and the unstoppable onrush of American capital conquered all. Often in violation of its own treaties, the United States removed Native groups to ever-shrinking reservations, incorporated the West first as territories and then as states, and, for the first time in its history, controlled the enormity of land between the two oceans. The history of the late-nineteenth-century West is not a simple story. What some touted as a triumph-the westward expansion of American authority-was for others a tragedy. The West contained many peoples and many places, and their intertwined histories marked a pivotal transformation in the history of the United States. Religious revival led to a slew of social movements while slavery expanded. Industrialization occurred predominantly in northern cities, while southern states held onto their plantations. Cotton was the major cash crop of the 1800's, and it was apparent that major changes were being made in the nation. In 1862, northerners in Congress passed the Homestead Act, which allowed male citizens (or those who declared their intent to become citizens) to claim federally owned lands in the West. Settlers could head west, choose a 160-acre surveyed section of land, file a claim, and begin "improving" the land by plowing fields, building houses and barns, or digging wells, and, after five years of living on the land, could apply for the official title deed to the land. Hundreds of thousands of Americans used the Homestead Act to acquire land. The treeless plains that had been considered unfit for settlement became the new agricultural mecca for land-hungry Americans. The Homestead Act excluded married women from filing claims because they were considered the legal dependents of their husbands. Some unmarried women filed claims on their own, but single farmers (male or female) were hard-pressed to run a farm and they were a small minority. Most farm households adopted traditional divisions of labor: men worked in the fields and women managed the home and kept the family fed. Both were essential. The railroads boomed. In 1850, there were 9,000 miles of railroads in the United States. In 1900 there were 190,000, including several transcontinental lines. To manage these vast networks of freight and passenger lines, companies converged rails at hub cities. Railroads brought cattle from Texas to Chicago for slaughter, where they were then processed into packaged meats and shipped by refrigerated rail to New York City and other eastern cities. Such hubs became the central nodes in a rapid-transit economy that increasingly spread across the entire continent linking goods and people together in a new national network. Railroads created the market for ranching, and for the few years after the war that railroads connected eastern markets with important market hubs such as Chicago, but had yet to reach Texas ranchlands, ranchers began driving cattle north, out of the Lone Star state, to major railroad terminuses in Kansas, Missouri, and Nebraska. Ranching was just one of many western industries that depended on the railroads. By linking the Plains with national markets and rapidly moving people and goods, the railroads made the modern American West. As the rails moved into the West, and more and more Americans followed, the situation for Native groups deteriorated even further. Treaties negotiated between the United States and Native groups had typically promised that if tribes agreed to move to specific reservation lands, they would hold those lands collectively. But as American westward migration mounted and open lands closed, white settlers began to argue that Native people had more than their fair share of land, that the reservations were too big, that Native people were using the land "inefficiently," and that they still preferred nomadic hunting instead of intensive farming and ranching. By the 1880s, Americans increasingly championed legislation to allow the transfer of Indigenous lands to farmers and ranchers, while many argued that allotting land to individual Native Americans, rather than to tribes, would encourage American-style agriculture and finally put Indigenous peoples who had previously resisted the efforts of missionaries and federal officials on the path to "civilization." Passed by Congress on February 8, 1887, the Dawes General Allotment Act splintered Native American reservations into individual family homesteads. Each head of a Native family was to be allotted 160 acres, the typical size of a claim that any settler could establish on federal lands under the provisions of the Homestead Act. Single individuals over age eighteen would receive an eighty-acre allotment, and orphaned children received forty acres. Americans acted as if the Dawes Act was an uplifting humanitarian reform, but it messed with Native lifestyles and left Native nations without sovereignty over their lands. The act claimed that to protect Native property rights, but it actually led to "the protection of the laws of the United States... over the Indians." This took away from Native rights.
Transcribed Image Text:Native Americans long dominated the vastness of the American West. Linked culturally and geographically by trade, travel, and warfare, various Indigenous groups controlled most of the continent west of the Mississippi River deep into the nineteenth century. Spanish, French, British, and later American traders had integrated themselves into many regional economies, and American emigrants pushed ever westward. The West was becoming more industrialized and laid down rails and pushed its ever-expanding population ever farther west. Indigenous Americans have lived in North America for over ten millennia and, into the late nineteenth century, perhaps as many as 250,000 Native people still inhabited the American West. But then unending waves of American settlers, the American military, and the unstoppable onrush of American capital conquered all. Often in violation of its own treaties, the United States removed Native groups to ever-shrinking reservations, incorporated the West first as territories and then as states, and, for the first time in its history, controlled the enormity of land between the two oceans. The history of the late-nineteenth-century West is not a simple story. What some touted as a triumph-the westward expansion of American authority-was for others a tragedy. The West contained many peoples and many places, and their intertwined histories marked a pivotal transformation in the history of the United States. Religious revival led to a slew of social movements while slavery expanded. Industrialization occurred predominantly in northern cities, while southern states held onto their plantations. Cotton was the major cash crop of the 1800's, and it was apparent that major changes were being made in the nation. In 1862, northerners in Congress passed the Homestead Act, which allowed male citizens (or those who declared their intent to become citizens) to claim federally owned lands in the West. Settlers could head west, choose a 160-acre surveyed section of land, file a claim, and begin "improving" the land by plowing fields, building houses and barns, or digging wells, and, after five years of living on the land, could apply for the official title deed to the land. Hundreds of thousands of Americans used the Homestead Act to acquire land. The treeless plains that had been considered unfit for settlement became the new agricultural mecca for land-hungry Americans. The Homestead Act excluded married women from filing claims because they were considered the legal dependents of their husbands. Some unmarried women filed claims on their own, but single farmers (male or female) were hard-pressed to run a farm and they were a small minority. Most farm households adopted traditional divisions of labor: men worked in the fields and women managed the home and kept the family fed. Both were essential. The railroads boomed. In 1850, there were 9,000 miles of railroads in the United States. In 1900 there were 190,000, including several transcontinental lines. To manage these vast networks of freight and passenger lines, companies converged rails at hub cities. Railroads brought cattle from Texas to Chicago for slaughter, where they were then processed into packaged meats and shipped by refrigerated rail to New York City and other eastern cities. Such hubs became the central nodes in a rapid-transit economy that increasingly spread across the entire continent linking goods and people together in a new national network. Railroads created the market for ranching, and for the few years after the war that railroads connected eastern markets with important market hubs such as Chicago, but had yet to reach Texas ranchlands, ranchers began driving cattle north, out of the Lone Star state, to major railroad terminuses in Kansas, Missouri, and Nebraska. Ranching was just one of many western industries that depended on the railroads. By linking the Plains with national markets and rapidly moving people and goods, the railroads made the modern American West. As the rails moved into the West, and more and more Americans followed, the situation for Native groups deteriorated even further. Treaties negotiated between the United States and Native groups had typically promised that if tribes agreed to move to specific reservation lands, they would hold those lands collectively. But as American westward migration mounted and open lands closed, white settlers began to argue that Native people had more than their fair share of land, that the reservations were too big, that Native people were using the land "inefficiently," and that they still preferred nomadic hunting instead of intensive farming and ranching. By the 1880s, Americans increasingly championed legislation to allow the transfer of Indigenous lands to farmers and ranchers, while many argued that allotting land to individual Native Americans, rather than to tribes, would encourage American-style agriculture and finally put Indigenous peoples who had previously resisted the efforts of missionaries and federal officials on the path to "civilization." Passed by Congress on February 8, 1887, the Dawes General Allotment Act splintered Native American reservations into individual family homesteads. Each head of a Native family was to be allotted 160 acres, the typical size of a claim that any settler could establish on federal lands under the provisions of the Homestead Act. Single individuals over age eighteen would receive an eighty-acre allotment, and orphaned children received forty acres. Americans acted as if the Dawes Act was an uplifting humanitarian reform, but it messed with Native lifestyles and left Native nations without sovereignty over their lands. The act claimed that to protect Native property rights, but it actually led to "the protection of the laws of the United States... over the Indians." This took away from Native rights.
Americans also experienced the "Wild West"-the mythical West imagined in so many dime novels-by attending traveling Wild West shows, arguably the unofficial national entertainment of the United States from the 1880s to the 1910s. Wildly popular across the country, the shows traveled throughout the eastern United States and even across Europe and showcased what was already a mythic frontier life. "Buffalo Bill" Cody was the first to recognize the broad national appeal of the stock "characters" of the American West-cowboys, "Indians," sharpshooters, cavalrymen, and rangers-and put them all together into a single massive traveling extravaganza. He employed real cowboys and Native Americans in his productions. But it was still, of course, a show. Storylines depicted westward migration, life on the Plains, and Indigenous attacks, all punctuated by "cowboy fun": bucking broncos, roping cattle, and sharpshooting contests. COL.W.F.CODY KATAL I AM COMING William Frederick "Buffalo Bill" Cody helped commercialize the cowboy lifestyle, building a mythology around life in the Old West that produced big bucks for men like Cody. Courier Lithography Company, "Buffalo Bill' Cody," 1900. Wikimedia.
Transcribed Image Text:Americans also experienced the "Wild West"-the mythical West imagined in so many dime novels-by attending traveling Wild West shows, arguably the unofficial national entertainment of the United States from the 1880s to the 1910s. Wildly popular across the country, the shows traveled throughout the eastern United States and even across Europe and showcased what was already a mythic frontier life. "Buffalo Bill" Cody was the first to recognize the broad national appeal of the stock "characters" of the American West-cowboys, "Indians," sharpshooters, cavalrymen, and rangers-and put them all together into a single massive traveling extravaganza. He employed real cowboys and Native Americans in his productions. But it was still, of course, a show. Storylines depicted westward migration, life on the Plains, and Indigenous attacks, all punctuated by "cowboy fun": bucking broncos, roping cattle, and sharpshooting contests. COL.W.F.CODY KATAL I AM COMING William Frederick "Buffalo Bill" Cody helped commercialize the cowboy lifestyle, building a mythology around life in the Old West that produced big bucks for men like Cody. Courier Lithography Company, "Buffalo Bill' Cody," 1900. Wikimedia.
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The Native Americans are an integral aspect of the history of the United States. The 19th century saw a lot of changes in the life and culture of the Native Americans as the US expanded westwards. With the American influence growing into new territories of the western regions, which the natives have occupied for centuries, it destroyed the culture, lifestyle, and religious beliefs of the native communities. 

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